Goals
Find background information about the automotive market in Roanoke's area, and detailed information about the most successful dealerships. Metrics that are of interest are volume of units sold, brands, profitability, and ownership structure.
Early Findings
- One of the top automotive dealerships in the Roanoke area is Berglund Auto Group, considered to be the best car dealership in Roanoke.
- It has been owned by the Farell family since 1988 and the Group runs 10 dealerships in Roanoke and Lynchburg.
- Six of these are in the Roanoke area. Berglund's revenue is estimated at $29.6 million.
- Roanoke has 35 dealers, of which 6 within 10 miles of Roanoke Centre belong to Berglund Auto Group.
- All other dealerships have one location each in Roanoke.
- Penske is an international transportation services company with 6 franchises in Virginia, that represent 2% of their total revenue in the US, which was $19.8 billion in 2017. They are the second largest automotive dealer in the United States.
- Sonic Automotive Group has two franchise stores in Virginia, representing 2.8% of their sales in the US in 2018 of close to $10 billion.
Proposed Next Steps
Our background research has found that specific information about automotive dealerships in Roanoke is not easily available, as most companies are privately owned and the publicly traded companies report data on the whole state of Virginia. The only major company found is Berglund Auto Group. Based on this preliminary search, we propose the following alternatives:
- Extend the scope of research to the whole state of Virginia, in order to be able to use information from annual reports of publicly traded companies such as Sonic and Penske . (3 hours, $75).
- Use triangulation to estimate the size of automotive dealerships and the brands they sell specifically in Roanoke by looking at their vehicles on sale in their website, and compiling a list of the to 3-5 dealerships using this metric. (3 hours,$75)